


a broken mirror's refraction

by kickedshins



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Could Be Canon, Gen, Season/Series 03, The Magnus Archives Is A Series Of Could Have Beens, canon-typical levels of tim's suicidal ideation, gets sort of melanie character study at the end?, i guess, mel + tim typical levels of dunking on jon, unsubtle implications of desolation!tim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23564059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: “And Sasha, well, she took me down and out of the building, and she even offered to get me some tea on the way out. Swore the other assistant—Martin, I’m now realizing—made the best cup she’d ever had. I didn’t take her up on it. It felt like… oh, I don’t know, like giving up, in a sense? Like, if I accepted the tea, I was also accepting the bullshit Jon yelled at me. Which is ridiculous, of course, but, well.” Melanie shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. The point is that she was good with me. Good to me. Took me seriously, but treated me like a person. I wish… I wish I could have talked to her more. I think I would have really liked her.”Tim sighs. He seems to shrink in on himself, a bucket of sand thrown over a bonfire. “I think I would have really liked her, too.”orTim wants to know who Sasha James was. The real Sasha James.
Relationships: Melanie King & Tim Stoker, Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 22
Kudos: 64





	a broken mirror's refraction

**Author's Note:**

> gd i just have SO MANY FEELINGS on tim and melanie and their different paths and i will go on ad nauseum about Anger if you let me. but here take this sort of friendship built on a mutual angsty hatred of the institute. takes place somewhere in the mid 110s. at the very least after 104 and before 117. enjoy!

Melanie’s pretty sure she didn’t give her number to anyone from work. But she’s awake in the middle of the night, leg aching, and her phone is telling her, clear as day, that about two hours ago, she got a text from an unknown number proclaiming itself to be Tim Stoker.

_ hey _

_ melanie? _

_ its tim _

She doesn’t have any reason to think it’s not him. Then again, she also doesn’t have any reason to think that it  _ is _ him, and what with the way her luck’s been going, it’s more likely than not that it’s some sort of demon masquerading as her jaded and irritable co-worker.

**tim** , she writes back,  **how did you get my number**

It’s almost one in the morning, so she isn’t expecting a response back. But she gets one almost right away. Which gives another point to the possibility of it being Tim, because she doesn’t doubt he’s got a terrible sleep schedule.

Then again, fear demons of death and deception probably don’t need sleep.

_ thru the grapevine _

**elaborate.**

_ got martin to ask elias for it _

_ happy? _

**no** , she decides.  **not particularly.**

She really hates Elias. He should not know her phone number. Then again, he also shouldn’t know how her father suffered as he died, so she supposes this flagrant violation of privacy is comparatively tepid, as things go.

_ meet me for coffee tomorrow? _

_ or today i guess. since its past midnight. _

_ there’s the cafe a few blocks north from work we could meet there at eleven if thats convenient. i have a few things i want to ask you abt _

Well, if it was some sort of hellbeing, it probably wouldn’t be asking her to get a coffee in the middle of a Saturday in a likely crowded location. Especially not at an establishment both she and Tim frequent.

**???** she asks, because she doesn’t want to commit to anything without being aware of what she might be dragging herself into. 

The dots on her screen indicate that Tim’s typing. They appear, disappear, reappear, disappear again. Finally, she gets a one-word reply:  _ sasha. _

Before she can stop herself, she’s pressing call on the phone. It rings twice before Tim picks up.

“Hello?” he says, and it does sound like him, tired to the core and one sleepless night away from breaking, so, yeah, probably not a monster, but Melanie still probably won’t be sure until they meet for coffee come morning. Even then, she thinks, she might not know. What if Tim got replaced by a bodysnatcher as well?

Though, in that case, he likely wouldn’t be asking around about Sasha. Unless it’s some sort of red herring or reverse psychology ploy.

Melanie shakes her head to clear it of her paranoia. “Hey,” she says. “Sasha?”

He clears his throat. She can hear the sound of bedsprings creaking underneath his weight as he sits himself up. “Yeah, Sasha. Look, Melanie, save it for morning. You should sleep.”

  
“Pot, kettle. You’re awake as well.”

“Yeah, sure, I’m a big hypocrite. My insomnia does not your insomnia necessitate.”

“You’re nicer to me than you are to others,” she accuses. “Why?”

  
He laughs. It’s a dry, brittle thing, and it crackles its way through the phone like a piece of timber going up in flames. “I’m meaner to Jon,” he corrects. “It’s nothing to do with you, I can promise you that.”

“Then why come to me specifically about Sash–  _ oh _ ,” she realizes. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, voice clipped. “Now, look, as much as I enjoy grasping at straws over the phone at one in the morning, this could really be done over a cup of coffee and at a humanly hour, don’t you think?”

“Right. Yes, you’re right. Well. Goodnight, then, Tim,” she says, not really sure how to end the call without being supremely awkward.

“‘Night,” he returns.

The line’s dead before she has a chance to hang up from her own end.

She tries to get to sleep but finds it difficult. Though, to be fair, that’s not entirely different than the way things have been going for a while. There’s Jon, of course, haunting her dreams. Making her restless. Making her angry. Making her itch with the desire to pin him to his desk with knives through his hands and bleed him out through a cut on his neck. And there’s the taunting sneer of Elias, his uppity gaze and his snooty accent and the way his palm felt pressed against the center of her forehead as he forced her to watch her father. Forced her to watch the way his flesh putrified, sloughing off the bone like a slow-cooked pig’s meat might do, and the way he burned. He’d taken ill already, and was much too far gone to be saved, but he was not yet dead. She can still the way his bones sung in agony at the fire that licked its way over his sick, hole-riddled body, phantom pain frying her nerves with the intensity of a Hunter, with the sure inevitability of the End.

She shudders, trying fruitlessly to push the horror from her mind. As she pulls her blanket tighter around herself, she thinks, unbidden, of the first statement she ever recorded as an official Institute employee. She’s sure it’ll take a while to forget the descriptions of a blanket fused to skin, of the inseparability of man and his imaginary shield, of the way his body turned half to the fluids of decay and half to pitch-black night. She’s sure she’ll never forget that the blanket was never any protection. That, once marked, there was nothing he could do except wait for the power that chose him to finish what it had started.

Melanie’s not entirely sure where she lies in all of this. She’d be a fool to consider herself purely human, at this point, but she’d be a fool to label herself a monster, either. She’s not anywhere as close to insane as Daisy is, or even Tim, arguably, but she’s not fully grounded. Her head’s stuck in– well, not stuck in the clouds, exactly, but certainly a haze. Some sort of brutal tunnel vision, her worldview getting narrower by the second.

It keeps her alive, though. It gives her purpose and strength and a hunger that reminds her that she is still at least somewhat human, because humans still need to eat and drink and do all the other trivial time-consuming things required to keep themselves alive. It aches through her leg and her heart and makes her want to scream with rage and joy and she really should be getting some sleep now because it’s past one and her mind is spinning like a shuriken thrown at terminal velocity.

She closes her eyes and tries not to think too hard about the Sasha that once was and lets herself drift off into another night full of bulging eyes that haunt her every move and pry her secrets from her unwilling mouth.

When she wakes to the sound of an alarm blaring at way-too-early in the morning, she instinctively hits snooze on her phone. The second time around, though, she remembers that she actually has plans, and that she probably shouldn’t flake on Tim when he’s set on asking her about his dead friend, so she drags herself out of bed and gets herself ready in time to meet him for coffee at eleven.

Tim’s sitting at one of the outdoor tables, leg bouncing up and down in the way it always seems to be doing. He’s holding a cold brew, and he detaches himself from its straw for long enough to give a quick greeting as she sits down, her own coffee in hand.

“Morning,” she says.

He nods, finishing off the last of his coffee. “Morning.”

  
“So,” Melanie starts, not entirely sure how to approach the situation. “Sa—”

“Tell me what she looked like,” he says, eyes desperate, voice hollow and raw.

Melanie is surprised. She hasn’t heard Tim sound like this since– well, since ever, probably. He doesn’t sound alive, exactly, but he does sound like there’s a very real possibility of dying. And of him caring about it. And that’s enough for now, probably.

“She was… well, she was tall,” Melanie says. “And, uh, yeah, I suppose to me most everyone is tall, but she was properly tall. About Jon’s height, I’d say? About five ten? And, well, she had long black hair that reached about her mid-back. She’d done some nice highlight thing with it, though. Balayage? I think that’s what it’s called. She had glasses, too, round ones. The ones that could easily be made just for display, but I’m pretty sure she needed them to actually see. I don’t– I don’t know, though, Tim, which is the issue here. I didn’t know her. I don’t know how much I can help. I can maybe sketch her for you later, if you’d like, because I’m not an awful artist, but I don’t know how much I can help.”

  
“Well, you can try,” Tim says. There’s a fire in his eyes that looks a bit too burning bright for Melanie’s comfort.

“Yes,” Melanie says. “Yes, I suppose I can.” She takes a long sip of coffee and surveys Tim’s appearance.

He’s an absolute wreck. Has been for a while now, but getting worse with each day. Today, he wears a dark purple hoodie and a pair of sweatpants that end somewhere between his knee and the top of his foot. His hair sticks out at odd angles and his eyes look both sunken and puffed at the same time. His leg continues jumping, and Melanie notices that he’s wearing one basketball sock and one ankle-cut sock.

“Do you remember much else?” Tim says.

“I– Tim, I don’t– I can’t– do you want to, y’know, actually talk about this? In a sort of professional sense, I mean.” Even as she offers, she feels uncomfortable. She doesn’t know Tim well enough to be therapizing him in any sort of capacity, and even if she did, she doubts she’d be any good at it.

So she’s grateful when he shakes his head. “Nah. No, I’m– no, I’ll pass. Uh, but, I mean, I can… do you remember what she was like? As, as a person, you know?”

And this is where Melanie has a choice to make. She can make up a version of Sasha James in her head. She can decide that Sasha James was a pleasant woman, or maybe a firecracker of a person. Perhaps Sasha James liked reading books; perhaps she prefered to listen to their audio counterparts. Perhaps she watched trashy reality television and perhaps she lived for nature documentaries. Whatever makes Tim get closest to cracking a genuine, non-sardonic smile. She can lie through her teeth and say she got some sort of idea as to who Sasha James was from their one brief interaction.

Or she can tell the truth. Say that she really doesn’t know. That all she remembers is that Sasha James was pretty and entertaining and would have probably been a lovely girlfriend.

It hits her with a sudden disgusting shock, the realization that Sasha could have been his girlfriend.

He would know, though, right? He would have known?

Melanie can’t be sure.

It’s that idea that pushes her over the edge. She owes him honesty, at the very least. She opens her mouth and shakes her head in an apology and says, “No, not really. Not really. I only talked to her once. She seemed… well, she seemed fun. Full of– full of life, I suppose.”

Poor choice of words. Tim’s eyes narrow, and he attempts to drink the rest of his coffee, except he’s already drunk all of it, so the only thing he achieves is a slurping noise that sets Melanie’s teeth on edge.

“I should know her,” Tim says. “Fuck, I should know her! I spent time in Research with her. Not too long, granted, because she came in from Artefact Storage and I’d been in Research the whole time, but… she was there. I was her friend. I think I probably had feelings for her at some point, and maybe we were something more, but, I mean, who know? I’ve spent too long with Jon judging me. It’s hard to figure out where I actually begin and where his perception of me ends, sometimes, so it’s just as likely we were nothing but good friends.” He laughs mirthlessly. 

“I mean,” Melanie says delicately, “it’s not the whole memory that got replaced, right? It’s just the face. If you remember being with her in, y’know, a non-platonic sense, whatever that might have been, I don’t doubt that—”

Tim glares at her. Pins her with his eyes and with a ferocity that rivals the steady thrum of Melanie’s blood in her veins, that rivals the coursing waves of rage she feels spiraling out from her leg. She swears the temperature rises a degree. “Just,” he spits. “She’s not  _ just  _ anything. She’s a person.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she was. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

Melanie gives a short, surprised bark of a laugh. “No. No, I suppose I’m not. I didn’t know her; I can’t say I miss someone that I didn’t know. I am sorry that I can’t help more, though, if that’s any consolation. And I do mean that. I don’t think… no one should have to suffer like that. Like her. Like you. It’s not– it’s not fair.”

“Nothing about the Institute is  _ fair _ , Melanie, and I would have hoped that you of all people were beyond those sort of delusions.”

She bites her tongue, trying to hold herself back from telling Tim that he sounds just a bit like one of his bosses when he gets like this. “I know,” she snaps.

“Sorry. Sorry, I just– Jesus, it’s, like, this is all I have, you know? This, this anger, this– I don’t know. Purpose. Drive. Whatever. And Sasha’s part of it. O–or she was, I guess. I think. I think she was. I think she was important to me. I think she was very important to me. As a friend, as something more, or even just as a coworker. I don’t– it’s just the idea that she’s really gone forever. That I worked next to something wearing what wasn’t even her skin for ages and I hadn’t the faintest clue. It, well… it messes you up.”

“I get that,” Melanie says. 

“And I have this vision in my head, right, of who she was. But I don’t know if it’s real. I don’t know if anything’s real. But then there’s you, and you say that you remember a bit of who she used to be, and I just. I need to know. Christ, I hate that need. I hate how much I absolutely have to know everything that’s beyond the scope of what I can see, what I can control. And it’s–it’s that place. It’s that place, and it’s a sickness, and I can’t seem to cure myself of it when it comes to her. Almost everything else I’m more than happy to shelve and move on as if it doesn’t matter. Because at this point nothing really matters, does it? But with her and with D– Well. Sasha… she shouldn’t be forgotten,” Tim says, swiping fiercely at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie. He scratches at one of the circular marks marring his face. Melanie’s pretty sure the story is worm infestation. He wears his scars better than Jon does his. She can’t imagine how it must feel for Tim to be physically tied to the person he seems to hate most.

Not fun, probably, especially considering that word on the street is that they used to actually be friends. The two of them and Sasha.

For a second, Melanie regrets not lying. Not lessening the blow. Not simply saying that she knew a Sasha James decently enough and not painting a picture of who that imaginary woman was and not letting Tim down gently.

But she knows how messed up and unfair that would have been of her. The world is a shitty place, and they both know it. And sugarcoating it is a fool’s errand, and Melanie King is anything but stupid. Melanie King is anything but soft.

“She shouldn’t be forgotten,” Melanie agrees. “Do you… do you want to talk about what you remember of her?”

“I don’t,” Tim says. “Or have you forgotten?”

“No, I know, but– I mean, do you think it would help to talk about what you think you do remember? Or, I guess, if it would be worse, then—”

  
Tim sighs. “No. I’ll try. Uh. Well, facts first, I suppose. Her desk was organized, always, and so was she, and I know that this is true, because I’ve listened back on some of the old tapes where Jon mentions how absolutely competent she was.”

“Okay,” Melanie says. “Okay, well, what else was there?”

“Not the ones with her voice,” Tim grumbles. “Of course not the ones with her voice. But there were the ones where Jon talked about her, and I hate him, hell, do I hate him, but he didn’t seem to hate her at all, which, I mean, I suppose means that she was a good worker, wasn’t she? Smart. Good with computers, though, to be fair, nearly everyone is good with computers in comparison to Jon Sims. Jesus. You know, back when we’d all just transferred, we threw Jon a surprise party—yeah, I know, I did used to like him, it’s… yeah—and Sasha and I thought that he was lying about his age, right, because he kept mixing up if he was turning thirty-seven or thirty-eight. So we snuck into the Archives to look on his computer for information on him, and it turns out he was turning thirty. And Sasha hacked his computer for that. At least I think so. I don’t– I don’t  _ know _ , and that’s what’s making me so… ugh!”

“That makes sense,” Melanie says. “The, the whole hacking bit. It seems like her. Well, I mean, she seemed quite smart, from what I recall. She was good at calming me down. She was logical like that, yeah?” Melanie laughs at the memory. “I was a piece of work the first time I came in. She talked me out of attempting to file a lawsuit, or something as equally ridiculous.”

“I know how crazy you were,” Tim says. “I know. Jon talked my ear off about it for the next two weeks. Kept going on and on about  _ integrity  _ and  _ selling oneself out as a former academic  _ and  _ the absolutely beyond-absurd notion that there even exists the presence of ghosts in this world _ .” Tim puts on a voice, a deep droll monotone, and Melanie can’t help but crack a smile. She thinks she would have really enjoyed Tim back when he was more person than anger, back before he was hollowed out and filled up with the fire of single-minded revenge.

“He’s an asshole,” Melanie says.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Tim agrees.

“And Sasha, well, she took me down and out of the building, and she even offered to get me some tea on the way out. Swore the other assistant—Martin, I’m now realizing—made the best cup she’d ever had. I didn’t take her up on it. It felt like… oh, I don’t know, like giving up, in a sense? Like, if I accepted the tea, I was also accepting the bullshit Jon yelled at me. Which is ridiculous, of course, but, well.” Melanie shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. The point is that she was good with me. Good to me. Took me seriously, but treated me like a person. I wish… I wish I could have talked to her more. I think I would have really liked her.”

Tim sighs. He seems to shrink in on himself, a bucket of sand thrown over a bonfire. “I think I would have really liked her, too.”

Melanie hums noncommittally. She doesn’t really know what else to say to help him. She doesn’t know if there  _ is  _ anything else she can say to help him. He’s shed a few tears and expressed his resentment at the world and solidified the fact that they’re all complete fools if they think they can try to reconstruct a person from a few patches of memory and a wireframe of want.

“Well,” Tim says. “Uh, thank you, I suppose. For this.”

“Not a problem,” Melanie says.

“No, really. I–I haven’t been the best lately.”

Melanie snorts. “Yes, I’ve actually noticed that.”

He gives her a bitter look, one that she’s felt her face twist into a few too many times in her life, and she shuts up. “And I think I’ve acted justifiably pissed off. But you didn’t have to do this for me, so thanks for entertaining my idiotic grasp at closure.”

“It’s not idiotic,” she says, frowning.

  
Tim sighs, hot steam hissing through a cracked chimney. “It was pretty idiotic. That’s how everything’s been lately. Stupidity upon stupidity, a mass of illogicalities and nightmares. Christ. I’m fucking tired of it. And I’m going to end it soon, but in the meantime, it isn’t what one might call fun.”

“End it?”

“Well, yeah,” he says, looking at her like she’s a small child who just asked how to do two times three. “You don’t think any of us will be coming back from that clown ritual alive, do you?”

Melanie feels like it’d be very impolite to agree with him, but it’d also be kind of stupid of her to disagree.

“Actually,” Tim reconsiders, “I bet Jon’ll come out fine. That’s just my luck, isn’t it? That’s the way the world goes. Jesus. Well, we’re going to save the world from the clutches of the Circus, or whatever, and I’m going to ruin what ruined me, and you’ll be back here at the Archives, right? So once we all die miserable deaths, you and Martin can be the proprietors of our wills.” He laughs. “It’s not as if there’s anyone else in this world left for me.”

Melanie says, “Do you… do you need a hug, Tim?”

He gives her a look. “Did the end of the world come early? Was I not informed? I feel like I made it very clear to Jon that I was to be informed when we were going out to face the end of the world.”

She gives him a genuine laugh at his gallows humor. “I’m serious. You look… well, putting it frankly, you look like you’ve been stuck through about four different blenders and then got emotionally minced with a blunt knife.”

“Glad to know I’m retaining my rakishly alluring good looks during this time.”

“Oh, trust me, you’re so very far from being my type in any way, shape, or form, on a plethora of levels. That doesn’t mean I can’t try to be your friend.”

“Sorry that you’re only getting a short time of that,” Tim says, shrugging quasi-apologetically, but mostly apathetically.

“That’s okay,” Melanie says. She’s beyond the point of arguing with him on this. He’s probably going to die when the Unknowing happenings, and, if all goes well, she’ll survive. Plus, if all doesn’t go well, the world will be twisted enough that friendship probably won’t be a comprehensible word, so it’s a net loss of friendship in either direction.

She gets out of her seat and comes around the small round table to him and puts her arms around his shoulders and pulls him in tighter than she thought she would. She holds him for a second, feels him melt into her, feels the rage that’s been coiled between his shoulderblades drip down like wax onto the ground below him, feels his breath catch in his throat as he holds back tears.

She doesn’t tell him that it’s going to be alright. She doesn’t tell him that she’ll always be here for him. She doesn’t tell him to calm down. She’s not a liar and she’s not a fool and she’s not about to dance around the inevitability of what’s to come. She just lets him hold onto her shoulders like she’s a buoy in the sea, like she’s the first person he’s hugged in months, which she probably is, and the last person he’ll ever hug, which she probably will be.

“Okay,” she says, patting him on the back and standing up straight. She pretends to not notice the wetness gathering under his eyes. “Well, even if this is the end of our time together, I’m glad to have been your friend, Timothy Stoker.”

He smiles. Really smiles, and it hurts her to see him like this, so broken and angry and all-consuming fire, and it hurts her to know that she’s not so far off from becoming him. “Likewise, Melanie King. Let me pay for your coffee. It’s not as if I need to be saving up money any longer.”

They part ways, Tim going off to get some groceries for the week and Melanie to take a short run before she goes to get lunch. She watches him go, all frayed edges and hard lines and six feet of destruction.

They could have been real friends, she thinks. If they crossed paths at a different time. Or even if either of them had made an effort to build a friendship once Melanie joined the Institute.

But that’s what that place does to them, doesn’t it? Tears apart potential outlets for help, because she’s almost certain they could have either helped to curtail each others’ unhealthy levels of rage or worked together to burn the place to the ground, raze it to absolute ashes without a second of regret. It drives them insane, turns them against each other, places blockades between good people and replaces them with bad ones.  Sure, Sasha’s the one who got stolen and replaced, but Melanie’s near-positive that Tim from a year ago wouldn’t be able to recognize Tim from today.

She promises to herself, then and there, that she’ll find a way to leave. She’ll never let this place control her, never let it twist her into a broken mirror’s refraction of her reflection. 

Melanie King will not let the world turn her into another Tim Stoker, no matter how much fire burns under her feet and no matter how much her blood sings for brutality. She’ll be a person, her own person, and she will subsist on human things like cups of instant ramen and corner-store wine, not on the everpresent hunger for revenge. She might be beyond the point of thriving, what with her soul signed away on a dotted line under the heading of an employment contract, but Melanie King will, at the very least, survive.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! kudos/comments always appreciated, or come yell @ me @ commaperson on the bird app :D


End file.
